LinkedIn has announced it has passed the 150 million member mark helping to seal its dominance over the professional social networking market. It passed the 100 million mark back in March 2011, but growth has been picking up steadily since then and it has added 20 million members since November.

LinkedIn released the 150 million figure as it revealed its latest numbers which has seen it double revenues for the fourth quarter with recruitment services being the fastest growing area of revenue by far. Read More »

This post is provided by our partner Headstream, the social brand agency behind the Social Brands 100.

So it’s finally happened; Facebook has filed for ‘the largest technology IPO in Wall Street history’. Everything about Facebook is immense; almost 850 million users and 2.7 billion likes and comments every day. As recently as the summer of 2008, Mark Zuckerberg was celebrating the 100 millionth user, that means 750 million people signed up in 3.5 years alone. Then there’s Twitter, hitting 500 million users any day now, not to mention Linkedin, who reported 135 million members in November 2011. Read More »

Facebook has chosen Morgan Stanley as the lead investment bank on its initial public offering and will file plans with the US Securities and Exchange Commission today. It is being reported that Facebook intends to raise around $5bn although that could rise to $10bn, which will value it at between $75bn and $100bn.

The appointment of Morgan Stanley means a considerably payday for the bank in what will be the biggest and most talked about IPO since Google in 2004. Read More »

A few weeks ago I wrote a story about LinkedIn and their aggressive approach in turning their platform into Temptation Island when it came to moving jobs. My ire was drawn from all the fabulous new ways they’ve conjured up to move jobs. Clever display adverts that put my head under a fancy job title, jobs I might be interested in floating down my newsfeed and a daily digest of jobs I might like on a weekly basis, usually at my weakest on a Monday.

The post had quite a lot of interest from business owners, to recruitment consultants to, would you believe it, LinkedIn themselves. They got in touch and wanted the chance to explain their vision and why my view, though valid, might have different facets unconsidered in the original piece.

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Identity is a funny thing. So many things govern who we are as individuals, but outward, visible identity often drives our actions. There are the perceptions others have of us from our outward appearance, how we choose to live, what we choose to say and all the various queues from body language to political affiliation. Read More »

Social media has clunked its way through many evolutions over the years. The past four has seen the digital world settle into a social rhythm. Facebook being the daddy of them all, Twitter is the cooler, younger kid on the block, and LinkedIn taking the lead as the place to hang out to talk serious stuff. The commonality with all of those platforms is they are essentially for everyone. The barriers to entry are extremely low. Most tech savvy people will generally have those three, even if they’re not active in all three (I bet everyone who reads this has all three).

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In the world of B2B, there is no doubt that LinkedIn is king. It’s a fantastic place to cultivate contacts, develop new ones, show off your business knowledge in a brash self-indulgent way and potentially win new business leads. It’s also been a pretty clever way of searching for jobs and it’s a  great way for a multitude of recruitment consultants to access your details and contact you for a ‘chat’.

Things were fine with LinkedIn and business. Employees went on there and pushed their personal brand by imparting their wisdom, this in turn benefited companies because those employees were acting as brand ambassadors which could help generate leads. Everyone was a winner. Read More »

When things start to feel stale you need to rethink your strategy. And Twitter is no different. This new kid on the block has given its user interface a makeover and while introducing a host of new features (http://fly.twitter.com/). The idea is to make it more persuasive as a social networking platform while also making it more intuitive for the un-initiated to navigate. However, the response has not all been positive. I for one think Twitter will likely fail to hit the mark on both counts. Read More »

A human resources manager was forced out of his job after uploading his CV on LinkedIn. Apparently this was deemed an “inappropriate use of social media” by his employer.

John Flexman, 34, says he hacked off his bosses after he clicked one of the standard boxes on LinkedIn to say he was interested in other “career opportunities”. Considering that LinkedIn is a very useful glorified CV membership alone enough should be enough to get us all the boot, no? Read More »

Just 14% of senior marketers in the UK indicate that their company has a fully integrated social media strategy, according to new data, while a majority of companies are either in their infancy or have no integration strategy at all.

The InSites Consulting study shows that in spite of low integration, social media adoption is high among UK companies, as about 70% have a Facebook page and 62% use Twitter. Read More »